Semper Fi
by Cascade Waters
Summary: Sometimes faith hurts. WARNING: Contains non-sexual spanking. Don't like, don't read.
1. Silent Night

SF part 1 - Silent Night

by firechild

Rated T+ (to be safe)

Warnings: Discipline of a sort; angst; sappiness; reference to a much, much higher power; and just to clarify, though I'd hope that I wouldn't need to, this is not slash or bdsm in any way, shape, or form. Oh, and it hasn't been betaed.

Disclaimer: I own the oc's; Rival owns Crock Pot, and the canon characters belong to someone who can afford more than one bottle of rolaids at a time.

A/N: This is my sad excuse for a Christmas gift for Marie. I'm sorry, sweetie; this is my first actual attempt at writing NCIS, and this is very much not what I had in mind when I started this story.

-----

_12-15-07 18:32PM_

"You finish scouting for jobs on my phone?"

Startled, Tony jerked his head up to see the light come on and Gibbs descend the basement stairs. Not bothering to ask how the older man knew what he'd been doing when Gibbs had come to check on him during lunch, Tony looked down again, fumbling to move the tarp back into place over what he'd been looking at before Gibbs could see, then shrugging one shoulder and trying to hide a wince. "Not a lot of career opportunities out there for a guy like me," he said lightly. "I'll pay your bill, don't worry."

Gibbs sighed a little. "DiNozzo, you do realize that all you had to was ask, right? I don't care about the long distance; I'd have helped you find what you needed. Heck, I'd have dialed for you." Except that he wasn't so sure that he would have, not knowing that Tony was putting out job feelers, especially for places that would take the younger man away. He wandered over to check the sanding on the keel of the boat, wondering why Tony was down here, and why he'd been sitting in the dark. "Seriously, aren't you jumping the gun a little bit? You don't even really know what's going to happen; I, for one, would prefer to count on hearing that I'll be smacking you around the office and listening to you bicker with McGee and Ziva until you all finally drive me well and truly insane. Now, if you'd really rather do something else..."

"No!"

The answer was so sharp and immediate that Gibbs nearly chuckled, but then he looked up and saw the look in Tony's eyes--something Gibbs could only describe as terror--and the amusement died. "Hey." Gibbs started toward the younger man but stopped as Tony stepped back. Gibbs held up his hands in a non-threatening gesture. "Hey," he said again, softer. He took another step toward his protege, and couldn't go any farther as he actually watched Tony shut down on him. Gibbs was so shocked for a moment, having only seen Tony do that to him once and having thought that they would never be back at that point--at this point--that he didn't move as the young agent he'd secretly begun to think of as something akin to a son bolted past him and up the stairs. "DiNozzo!"

There was no response. Gibbs shook his head, running a hand through his hair in an uncharacteristic gesture of frustration. Unable to concentrate on his boat, he went upstairs, figuring that he might as well get comfortable because it looked like another long night. He'd had a lot of those lately, too many, but he also knew that if he hadn't slept more than a couple of hours each night, Tony hadn't slept at all, not without the drugs, and while it might have had something to do with the fact that the ex-cop hadn't seen his own bed in a week, the older agent was starting to suspect that there was more going on in that thick head than just thoughts of how he'd make it financially if NCIS dismissed him.

He sighed again to himself as he stepped out of the shower a few minutes later, drying off and dressing while still mulling over Tony. What was he supposed to do with him? Sure, the boy put up a good front, managing to lull everyone else in the office into believing that he'd all but beaten this and would be back in a few days (so how had he gotten job leads, if not from Abby?) but Gibbs had known him longer and he could see that the young man was not doing well with this. Not that Gibbs could blame him, but a discouraged DiNozzo was as bone-deep wrong as a quiet Abby. He'd been warned to watch for depression, told that it was normal in situations like this, though what could be normal about this 'situation' Gibbs didn't want to know, but if he was honest with himself, he hadn't really considered it, considered what he'd do, because he'd figured that if he didn't acknowledge the possibility, then it wouldn't happen. Gibbs hated to admit that, even to himself, but he couldn't get around it now. Now here was the dragon, laughing at him with teeth bared, mocking him for a fool, and it was ticking him off. He had the urge to treat Tony like a pouting plebe, to yell and work and embarrass the younger man out of his funk, but Gibbs was a man who'd learned to live by his gut outside of the crime scene tape, and as there seemed to be a lack of tape around his house just now, he had to go on his gut; unfortunately, instinct didn't always provide the easy out. He needed to help Tony, and what his gut told him now was that Tony didn't need the angry Marine--he should save that for the field and the interrogation room--but Gibbs wasn't sure that he could be what Tony needed now. Gibbs didn't do soft, hadn't done soft for sixteen years, except with Abby, and she was a special case.

Then what did that make Tony?

His thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the landline downstairs, and just for a moment, he stopped breathing, remembering the last time he'd heard that ring and answered it.


	2. Do You Hear What I Hear?

SF part 2 - Do You Hear What I Hear?

_12-10-07 21:49PM_

It had been a long day, and Tony was glad that it was finally over; he'd been going almost nonstop for the past week, actually, fighting to close two cases and wrap up some paperwork on his last undercover job, dealing with Jenny and the unresolved tension between them, and trying to decide on the perfect gifts for his coworkers. He hadn't been in the best of moods all day, and the headache that had started sometime this morning was now doing a creditable cover of the Blue Man Group's greatest hits behind his eyes. He'd managed to snap at all of them at least once today, and he'd spent way too much time apologizing for his unusual behavior. Things had just felt wrong all day long, possibly because Ziva was undercover in Gaza and wouldn't be back until the end of her assignment. He'd made the mistake of turning on the radio on the way home--he'd never admit it to anyone, but he had a weakness for silly Christmas comedies, and he wanted to find out if there were any on tonight to improve his mood--and he'd wound up listening to the news and thinking to himself that the most wonderful time of the year also tended to be the bloodiest. Between reports of robberies at charities, some idiot delivering pipe bombs as pranks (complete with Christmas wrapping and the sound boxes from musical holiday cards--really, did they think anything about a bomb was actually funny?) a team of armed perps dressed as reindeer holding up jewelry stores, and something about car thieves waiting around to brutalize their victims, Tony's holiday spirit was in serious trouble, and so was his temper. He'd have switched off the radio if he hadn't arrived home just then, gathering his discarded tie and mentally daring someone to try to mug him for his car tonight.

He made it inside safely, only to find out that the elevator was out, which left him with five flights of stairs, which just did wonders for his headache. He was shouldered by someone coming down the stairs, and when he yelled after the guy, the jerk turned and very cheerfully flipped him off. By the time Tony reached his hall, he was ready to dismember anyone who dared show their face or make any noise.

He was unlocking his door when he heard it.

"Hi, Mr. Nose!"

Something in Tony went liquid. He turned, surprised that he didn't have to work to find a smile. He crouched down, his eyes taking in the fuzzy white slippers, the brown overalls, the white turtleneck with the dancing Santas, the glossy black pigtails secured with jingle bell ponytail holders, the dimpled face the color of warm toffee, and the huge dark eyes. "Hi, Marie. Is everything alright? It's a little late for you to be up and out in the hall."

She gave him an indulgent look. "Nuh unh. I'm a big girl; I can stay up long as I want--Unca said."

Tony chuckled. "Okay, then, I was wrong. After all, you are a very big girl," he said to the very little girl who was trying very hard not to yawn. "So you must have used your magic." When she looked at him oddly, he said, "How else did you know that I was going to be here just exactly now and needing some Marieness?"

The five-year-old giggled. "I didn't come out for you, silly!"

Tony put on a hurt face, and suddenly found his arms full of repentant little girl. "I sorry, Mr. Nose, I didn't mean to be mean." She pulled back, anxious. "'Give me, please?"

He smiled and tapped the tip of her tiny nose. "I was just playing with you, Bit. You didn't hurt my feelings. I'm sorry for scaring you. Forgive me?" She nodded, and his smile grew. "So, if it wasn't to see your favorite neighbor, what brought you out here?"

She blinked a few times, fighting off a wave of droopiness, and had to think for a moment. "Oh! I 'member! Somebody knocked on the door, and Unca is at the pet place givin' Miguel a bath. He's a boy dog, and boys are stinky, so they need lots of baths." She crinkled up her nose and waved a hand in front of her face for effect.

"I'm sure they do. Weren't there any other grownups around to answer the door?"

She shook her head, pigtails and bells dancing. "Nuh unh. Mommy and Papa went somewhere... I don't 'member where. But it's okay, 'cause I'm a big girl 'n I can reach to open the door."

Tony knew her uncle, knew he was a nice guy, but right then, he could have wrung the man's neck. "Who was at the door?"

Marie looked a little confused. "Nobody. I heard a knock, but when I gots to the door, he was goin' away and he wouldn't come back. But he lefted us a present." She brightened as she remembered. She turned and picked up the package very carefully. "It's pretty paper! The sticker thingy has a R on it--I know my letters good--so it must be for Ross. His name starts with R, you know. Oh, I hope he lets me have the paper!" She traced a finger over the glittery green paper covered with gold stars and pure white snowflakes, admiring the obviously carefully wrapped package. "I wonder if it's from his girlfriend. He says she's not, but he sure likes to kiss her a lot."

Tony nodded sagely, placing his hands gently on her sides. "Yep, that usually means she's a girlfriend. Listen to me, Marie--are you listening?"

She nodded, not quite able to fight off another yawn that made one eye wink. "Uh huh."

Tony looked at her very seriously. "I like you a lot, and I would never want anything bad to happen to you."

She nodded. "I like you, too, Mr. Nose!"

"Thank you, sweetheart. You're a very special little girl, so I want you to promise me something. You know what a promise is, right?" He waited for her nod. "Good. I want you to promise me, right now, that you will always wait for a grownup to open the door when you can, and that you'll never, ever, ever open the door when you're home alone or for anyone you don't know unless they have one of these." He left one hand on her side and used the other to pull out his badge, watching her eyes widen at the shiny metal. "That badge means that they're a police person, and police people are friends, but if you don't know the person outside and they don't have one of these, I want you to promise me that you won't open the door or tell them that there aren't any grownups around. If you get scared, or you're not sure, you call me," he handed her a card, "I know you know how to call someone on the phone because I've seen you do it; you can call me, and I'll make sure everything's okay, but if you don't know the person and they don't have a badge, you don't open the door. Can you do that for me? Can you promise me?"

Her eyes were huge. "Are you mad at me?" she whispered, dismayed.

"No, baby, I'm not mad at you, I promise. I just want you to be very safe. So how about it?"

She nodded, and was confused when he shook his head. "No, Bit, I need to hear you say it."

"I promise."

"That's good, but can you tell me what you promise?"

Taking a deep breath, because after all, this was an awful lot for a five-year-old to remember, she said, "I promise to never open the door by myself or unless I know them or they have a badge like yours." She thought for a second. "Oh, and if I don't know, I should call you on the phone and ask for help."

He smiled proudly. "That's my girl!" He hugged her gently, breathing in the scent of sleepy little girl and wishing, just for a second... He released her and stood up, thinking that he really needed to have a chat with her uncle but that it would have to wait till tomorrow. "Go on inside, now, and get ready for bed. You can't fool me--it's okay to be sleepy. Even grownups just need to go to bed sometimes. Go on now. Sleep sweet, Bit."

He watched her open her door and then reach down for the package before he turned back to finish unlocking his own door, having fond thoughts of four aspirin and his own bed. He heard her rattle the present a little, babbling softly to herself between sleepy snuffles about what kinds of neat things Miss Kissyface might have given Ross. Tony was halfway through his door when he heard her delighted squeak.

"It's singing!"

Tony turned. "What?"

She looked up at him, smiling at this little bit of magic. "It's singing, Mr. Nose!"

It was probably nothing. "Let me see that, Bit." He crossed back to her, leaning down and reaching for the package.

"I wanna hear!" She angled away from him, holding the box up to her ear.

"Marie, give me the box, baby."

"No! Mine!" He could see the tears forming in her eyes. Working on instinct, he reached down and snatched it out of her hands, ignoring her increasingly shrill protests, holding the box over his head and turning around as he started to walk away from the girl, getting the (probably harmless) present as far away from her as he could. He'd touched off what promised to be a world-class meltdown from the very tired child, and part of his mind thought dryly that this was going to be fun to explain.

He was trying to put a name to the canned tinkling of some familiar Christmas song, and his mind stumbled over an odd _phfthlpp_, so that he barely registered when her angry screams changed; after that, there were thumps and voices, one of which might have been his own, and a familiar voice that was very, very far away, and then...

Nothing.

-----

Gibbs had just settled in for an evening in his recliner with a rib-eye and his boat schematics when the phone rang. He was so used to having everything come in on his cell that he reached for it first, only belatedly registering that he was hearing the landline. He was more than a little confused, as the number was uber-unlisted; he kept the line more out of habit than anything else, and outside of the SecNav, only three people had the number--Ducky, Abby, and most recently Tony. As he'd seen all three an hour ago and they all knew to call his cell, and then only if it was worth dying for, and the unusually antisocial DiNozzo was the only one who didn't have a party to attend tonight, he couldn't imagine what would be worth leaving his steak. He listened as the ancient answering machine clicked on with his "You know what to do" announcement, and started to relax, but the caller hung up, and a moment later, the jangling started all over again. Cursing to himself, Gibbs got up and stalked to the kitchen, grabbing the handset. "This better be worth my rib-eye."

"Excuse me, is this Mr. Gibbs?"

He didn't recognize the woman's voice, but he could hear vaguely familiar noise in the background. Something set him on edge. "Try Special Agent Gibbs. Who are you and why am I talking to you?"

He heard her voice conferring in low but urgent tones with someone about a blood type, then came back to the phone. "I'm sorry, sir; I'm calling in regard to an Anthony DiNozzo. Yours is the only number programmed into his mobile."

Blood type. A sound he was suddenly certain was a portable respirator. Tony.

Gibbs was halfway to the car.

"Where are you taking him?"

-----

"Jethro."

Gibbs turned in mid-pace to see Ducky limping in; he'd come straight from his party, apparently, judging by the light-up holiday bow tie.

"What do we know?"

Gibbs hadn't bothered to suss out why he'd automatically called Ducky first, but he didn't regret it, as seeing the older man steadied him just a little. "We really don't know," he growled, his outrage at being totally in the dark vibrating through him. "He was home, in the hallway outside of his apartment. Most of his neighbors aren't home, and no one saw anything. We know a kid called 911, but she wouldn't give her name and she must have been scared because they can't find her now." He stopped moving long enough to meet his old friend's eyes. "It was a bomb--maybe a pipe bomb, though there's as much of it in him as there is at the scene."

Ducky's eyes widened. "Was it planted in his flat?"

Gibbs shook his head. "In his hands, Duck. He was holding it when it exploded."

-----

One hour, five phone calls, three conversations with the DC police, one agent, two scientists, one director, and six untouched cups of bad coffee later, Gibbs headed for his car with McGee on his heels. He'd been unable to convince Abby or Ducky to go home and sleep, and Jenny had insisted on taking over dialogue with the media and the police as much for their sakes as for Gibbs's, so he was sure that the three of them would be at the hospital when Tony got out of surgery.

It had been a form of pipe bomb, from what the surgeons and the original crime scene team could tell; apparently, it had been a fairly small affair, which was a blessing, and from the damage patterns, the head surgeon was guessing that Tony was holding the thing away from himself somehow, because while his arms had sustained deep lacerations and shrapnel, and there were a few lacerations and contusions on his face and forehead, Tony would live.

His hands, though...

Gibbs had bullied one of the interns into taking photos (mostly because he couldn't get Ducky into the OR, and he didn't have access to the DCPD's photos yet because the case hadn't been officially turned over to NCIS, even though it had clearly become Federal as soon as that boomer had gone off) and even the seasoned investigator had had to swallow back bile at the sight.

Tony had been holding the package in both hands. Gibbs felt that it must have been homemade, judging from the size, because it hadn't had much of a charge, relatively speaking, but it was still a bomb, it had still had a forced explosion, and it was just possibly a miracle that it hadn't torn off Tony's fingers or his whole hands. The pieces of the device had shorn through muscle and major vein, though, and there were several broken bones.

The worst of it was that the chief of surgery himself had scrubbed in to assist and then had come out to tell the patient's 'family' that while Tony might not lose his hands yet, how much (if any) dexterity he'd have if he kept them was incalculable at this time. He told them that someone in the DCPD had already ordered that all of the pieces be bagged and marked as evidence; he was also honest enough to tell them that more than replacing the blood Tony had lost or setting bones, they would have to watch for any sign of infection, especially since the device hadn't been all that clean when it was built.

Gibbs might not officially have the case, but nothing was going to keep him away from the scene, from finding out who'd done this and why. He and McGee pounded up the stairs to Tony's floor, trying not to think about Tony being taken down all those stairs while his hands and arms and head bled from a myriad of wounds. McGee was silent, and Gibbs spared a glance at the young man, proud that McGee was finding his mad--he'd need it.

The lead investigator, a Lieutenant Nieto, introduced herself as soon as they appeared, and whether she'd been briefed or had just smelled Fed on them, Gibbs didn't really care. She dutifully noted that the case was still local until the paperwork went through, and then flatly ignored protocol, filling them in on everything she knew. She promised to have her notes copied to them before the ink was dry on the jurisdiction transfer, and though she didn't mention it, her eyes said that she'd watched one of her own from the other side of a machine before. Some little part of Gibbs's mind filed away her name as a stand-up cop before he turned to look at the hallway and felt the friend rise to the surface for just a moment.

Oh, Tony...


	3. What Child is This?

Warning: This chapter contains corporal discipline; you've been warned.

SF part 3 - What Child Is This?

_12-15-07 18:57PM_

The events of the past few days blazed through Gibbs's mind as he descended the stairs, registering somewhere in the back of his mind that the ringing had stopped and that he could just hear Tony's voice. Leave it to DiNozzo to find a way to work his mouth even if he couldn't work his hands.

_Jurisdiction transferred just after midnight, barely staying out of the CIA's greedy hands (DiNozzo's name tended to send up little flags of sick glee among agents like Kourt,) and Gibbs and McGee sent the probie who'd come to join them to oversee the transfer of evidence from the local to the NCIS lab. The two men examined the scene, then Tony's apartment, and then they started canvassing the neighbors; it wasn't like the few who weren't at holiday parties were going to be getting any sleep tonight, anyway. The canvas was largely a bust for the sheer lack of people, but then..._

_Gibbs knocked on the door farthest from the blast point, ironically Tony's closest neighbor. No one responded, there was no sound, the locals' reports had indicated another dud, but... "NCIS." Nothing. It wasn't a sound, or a smell; it was more of a feeling. "I know you're in there. Open up." Now he heard something soft, like a chuff or a sniffle. Willing to do just about anything to get information, Gibbs forced himself to gentle his voice. "We just need to talk to you."_

_Silence, then another sniffle. "Can't."_

_Gibbs blinked. "Why not?"_

_"Not s'posed to open the door. Promised."_

_A child. _

_The child?_

_Gibbs sank to his knees, closer to the source of the voice. "You promised? That's a big deal. Can you tell me what you promised?"_

_Sniffle. "Not to open the door when I'm 'lone or when I don't know who it is. 'Cept if they have the badge."_

_"There were policemen here earlier, and you didn't open the door then; they had badges."_

_"Not the right one. Has to be _the_ badge, like his."_

_"That makes sense, I guess. Are your mom and dad home?"_

_A pause. "Can't tell you."_

_"Why not?"_

_"You ask a lot of questions."_

_Gibbs almost smiled. "That's my job." He took a guess. "You're a very smart young lady; I bet you could answer some of my questions."_

_"Maybe. Still can't tell you if Mommy and Papa are here. Promised him that, too."_

_Definitely a girl--no boy would stand for the 'young lady' line. She sounded forlorn, and Gibbs found his fingertips resting against the door as if he could reach through and soothe her. "Sounds like a good promise to make, and a good friend to ask for it. Who is he?"_

_A longer pause, more sniffles. "Mr. Nose." She was almost whispering now._

_Gibbs closed his eyes for a moment, then forced himself to open them again. "I see. I know Mr. Nose, and he is a very good friend to have. He looks out for you?"_

_"Uh huh. 'Cause he said he likes me and he wants me be safe."_

_She couldn't be more than six or so, if his memories of Kelly, which he'd only tap for a very short list of people, were any measuring stick; when Kelly'd gotten into school, she'd taken great pride in not dropping words like 'to' and 'I', though she'd been in about second grade before she'd really grown out of it. _

_He took a breath against the old pain. "Yep, that's the Mr. Nose I know. Tell you what--I bet I can find out out smart you are without making you break your promise."_

_"How?"_

_"I have something you should see."_

_"What?"_

_"I have a badge. Oh, but not just any badge--_the_ badge, the super-special badge that only good friends like our Mr. Nose wear. Would you like to see it so that you know it's okay to talk to me?"_

_A rustle. "Uh huh. But I can't--promised not to open the door."_

_He smiled. 'Tony, you big poser.' Gibbs glanced up at the door. "Can you look up for me, at the door? Do you see that metal thing sticking out way up there where your papa's head would be?"_

_"Uh huh." _

_"Good. That's a hole, and it goes all the way through to this side of the door so that you can see out without breaking your promise. Now, I want you to be very, very careful when you do this; ready?"_

_"Yeah."_

_"Okay. I want you to go find a chair--a good, strong chair, one of the ones around the table, and I want you to very carefully bring it over to the door. I'll wait right here."_

_He stood up and waited while a few minutes passed, listening carefully for sounds of anything falling, and he was just starting to get worried when he heard a scraping from the other side. _

_"Okay," she said, huffing and puffing._

_"Very good! Is it a very strong chair, one that won't fall over?"_

_"Uh huh."_

_"Atta girl! Now I want you to stand on your knees on the seat, and then carefully stand up on the chair and face the door."_

_A pause. "Okay." Her voice was definitely closer to his now._

_"Good. Now, can you stand on your toes and look into the hole? I don't want you to fall, so be careful."_

_"I know, I know." Gibbs shook his head at the childish exasperation. He heard a rustling and another sniffle and then, "Okay. Is that you?"_

_He smiled at the peephole. "Can you see me talking to you?"_

_"Uh huh. You're old."_

_"I guess I am. My name is Gibbs, and this is my badge." He held it up to the peephole for a thorough inspection, a little impressed that she'd noticed the differences between Tony's and the cops'. "What's your name?" _

_He was beginning to wonder if he'd lost her when he heard the deadbolt turn. There was more scraping and huffing, and then the knob rotated and the door slowly opened. "Marie," she mumbled._

_Huge, teary eyes looked up at him from an opening barely the width of his hand. He would be surprised if she was six yet. He smiled and dropped to a crouch again. "Hi."_

_She waved shyly at him. He saw her glance back into the hallway, toward the place where Tony had fallen, where the blood still stained the walls and floor, and then quickly drop her eyes. "No, baby, you don't need to look at that. Why don't you just look at me, instead?" She pulled her eyes up to meet his, searching for some sort of reassurance. "He's going to be just fine, and you know why?" She shook her head, eyes wider than he thought possible. "Because you called for help right away. You're a hero, sweetheart--you saved Mr. Nose!" He was more than a little surprised when she shook her head and tears fell. "No? I think you did. Why don't you?"_

_"Saved me." She was crying hard now, wiping irritated eyes on dancing Santas. When she hiccuped, he decided that he didn't give a flying flip about propriety; he opened his arms, and she rushed into them, burying herself in the front of his shoulder. Burying his own pang, he gave her a couple of minutes to ride the wave, rubbing her small back, then murmured to her. She thought, then nodded, and he stood up with her in his arms, gesturing for McGee to follow him into the apartment. McGee produced a soft handkerchief and Gibbs mopped her up, the gentle touches helping to steady her. Gibbs sat her on the couch and wrapped a blanket around her, and before McGee went to stand in the doorway of the apartment to guard the scene, he pulled out his badge and said that his name was Tim._

_She was very young and very scared and she thought that she might have made Mr. Nose go away forever, but her memory was sharp, including being able to hum enough of the bomb's tune for them to know that she'd probably never be able to listen to "Silver and Gold" again, and if she'd missed some details while she'd been throwing a tantrum, well, these things happened. She remembered enough to have Gibbs calling to have someone check on Ross and make sure that the bomber hadn't found his target after all. She told them that her family had never left her alone before and probably wouldn't ever again, and she told them where her uncle had gone and why. They were just finishing up, and she was just about asleep, when McGee intercepted a man with a very clean Husky at the door, and the dog went straight to a sleepy but relieved Marie, letting her burrow into his neck. The man was demanding to know who they were and where his niece was, and Gibbs steered him back out into the hall with a demand for a reason not to call CPS. When the alarmed uncle showed genuine shock that Marie had been left alone, Gibbs relaxed just a fraction and explained the situation. The man went pale when he heard that his neighbor had been hurt, and almost collapsed at the news that the bomb may have been meant for his nephew. He started asking for someone to check on the boy, who was staying with a friend closer to the high school, and Gibbs assured him that it was already ordered._

_By the time they'd sent the two off to stay with relatives in the next town, McGee had texted the former primary on a hunch, and had learned that the DCPD was working a serial of prank pipe bombs that had, until now, caused only minor injuries. Gibbs sent McGee 'home' knowing that the young man would be sleeping on hospital tiles that night, checked in with the hospital, where Tony was still in surgery, and suggested something to Jenny that nearly shocked her out of her waiting room chair. Another hour saw him back at the hospital, updating Jenny before dozing off._

_First thing in the morning, Gibbs had entered the quiet office to find Palmer inspecting the bomb fragments in Abby's lab--he said he'd done time in a lab before and saw no reason why he shouldn't leave Abby asleep at the hospital so that she could be fresh later to help nail the sucker--and a scared-looking teenage boy in the waiting area. Ross didn't know much, but he stood--for his sister, he would spill every embarrassing secret he'd ever had. Gibbs sent him to his uncle with an escort, checked in with Ducky, took some coffee down to Palmer, and returned to find the lead cop at his desk._

_She'd taken over the pipe bomb case at his request, and two days later, with the DCPD's information and Lieutenant Nieto's grit and the NCIS's clout and sheer fury and top forensic scientist, the two agencies nabbed not only the actual serial, but the teenage copycat who'd tried to hurt Ross for embarrassing the kid's sister by refusing to sleep with her. Though the DCPD officially got the serial and NCIS settled for the copycat, McGee got to arrest the teenager, Abby and Palmer got credit for helping with both cases, and Gibbs got to get into both perps' faces, scaring the c out of them with phrases like "federal prison" and "attempted capital murder." The copycat would probably plead down but would be charged as an adult and would be kicking himself for years in jail for not making sure that the Christmas card he bought with his father's Visa wasn't a limited release sold only at two stores, and the serial was going back to jail for parole violation, which carried more weight than malicious mischief in his case. At the end of the day, it was more than they would have expected from a joint investigation, and Gibbs treated Lieutenant Nieto's team to a round of drinks to celebrate both the collars and Tony's release the next day._

Unfortunately, Tony's release hadn't meant that he was healed. His hands were heavily banaged and immobilized, and he had to have wound care several times a day; the real tell that there was something more going on in his head, though, was the fact that he had completely passed on the opportunity to crack on getting wound care from a man who cut up the dead--and talked to them while he did it. Ducky had been concerned enough to bring it to Gibbs's attention while they were waiting for the release paperwork, and while the younger agent put on a good act, he couldn't fool his boss or his 'nurse.'

Even needing the bed for more immediate patients, the doctor hadn't wanted to release him, knowing that Tony lived alone, but Gibbs had resolved that problem rather neatly when he'd announced that the younger man would be staying with him until he was able to handle things himself. Tony had been stunned by that declaration, stumbling to assure Gibbs that he didn't have to do this, that Tony would be fine on his own, but a look from Gibbs silenced him long enough for the doctor to challenge the young man to try to handle a button or a zipper. Tony had been stubborn enough to protest but smart enough not to make a fool of himself by taking the challenge; a few hours later, he'd been settling in to Gibbs's guest room, trying to be independent and to not think about his future resting in the hands of his doctors, who had warned him that until the swelling went down, there would be no way to tell if he'd ever be able to fire a gun, or cut up his own food, again.

He had emphatically not wanted Gibbs to stay home, and Gibbs hadn't been keen to leave the boy alone for long periods, so they'd compromised--Gibbs had planned to come home for lunch every day, and Jenny had privately arranged to keep the lead agent in town for as long as possible, which had meant that a couple of other teams actually got some field time and McGee was getting some leadership experience keeping them out of trouble. He, Ducky, and Abby had all offered to take shifts staying with Tony, but Gibbs had known Tony well enough to redirect them; it had been hard enough for his protege to accept just his help with most things, and the younger man had already declared that he'd rather take baths than have to be helped with a shower and could get by just fine on coffee and energy drinks in lieu of anything that required utensils. Caving on the hygiene but not on the food, Gibbs had spent considerable energy trying to figure out how to take care of the boy without totally demoralizing him--he'd tried joking about Playboy Bunnies with nursing experience, but Tony had barely reacted, and Gibbs had had the sudden thought that he was losing him even as he was bringing him home.

That thought had plagued Gibbs for days, bringing with it an uncertainty that the former Marine couldn't accept in himself and an unexpected bitter fury toward Jeanne for not being here to get the man she supposedly loved through this, and now, as he stood just outside of his own kitchen and listened as a young man he considered his in more than one way shared more with a voice on the phone than he would with Gibbs, the senior agent knew that something had to change.

As he tuned in, he realized what Tony was saying, and his heart turned over again.

"...out, but I can't help it, man. What if I lose it? What if I can't go back to it? The job is everything, you know that--I earned the badge to prove to my father that I could be something. But my father was right--I've never made anything out of myself. The badge made me; cop or NCIS doesn't matter, it's all I've got. Without it, I'm nothing. I have no identity. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the job listings and all, but seriously, who's gonna hire me now? Who'd want me? No wonder Jeanne didn't stick around; there was nothing to stick to. I might as well be invisible. I can't--no--I--listen--hey--"

Gibbs's blood pressure skyrocketed, but he kept his grip. How blind had he been, and for how long? He'd known that Tony's father wouldn't win any awards, but he'd never imagined that the problem ran this deep. He hoped that whomever was on the other end of the line was tearing Tony a new one for all that bull. As he strode through the kitchen door, he was planning to make the point, as drastically as possible, himself.

He was planning to... and then he saw Tony fumbling to hang up the phone, trying not to look guilty and failing, and the plan stalled before it was really formed. Stowing the boiling anger under a tarp of Gibbsness, the older man gave the younger a bland look. "I'm gonna charge you double if I see any 900 numbers on my bill."

Tony flushed, obviously relieved (and obviously off his game if he was buying the act, but that was okay--Gibbs could let him be off his game for a little while,) and mumbled an apology, something about a buddy checking up on him. Gibbs ignored it, opening the fridge and pulling out the Crock Pot liner that Palmer had dropped off at his desk without explanation that morning, and peeling back the foil over the clear lid to find the dish full of some sort of stew--he recognized largish chunks of beef and potatoes and carrots among other things--and wondered how they were going to engineer this. He was mulling over it when he remembered a smaller foil package that Palmer had folded into the foil covering the lid, both of which Abby had been kind enough to store in the lab while they'd all spent their Saturday finishing up paperwork for the end-of-year audit. Gibbs fished through the foil to find the packet, then opened it to reveal two gleaming new sets of hinged metal salad tongs and a note. The note said to put the pot into the microwave for ten minutes (which Gibbs did) and then went on to apologize for only being able to do the smaller version of Spike Salad, something he'd apparently learned in college, where it was customary to eat with the most unusual utensil available, and the salad tongs had won for this dish, giving it its name. As a postscript, Palmer had added that he'd guessed Gibbs might appreciate not having to order take-out after spending all day on the phone with Accounting more than Palmer's usual gift of a coffee mug.

Funny, how it didn't mention Tony. Or a desperate need for man-food. Or the fact that salad tongs might actually work with bandaged hands.

'You are a deep well, Palmer,' Gibbs thought as he realized that he was smelling bacon, baked beans, corn, molasses, and, if he wasn't mistaken, cooked-out Jack Daniels.

Spike Salad.

He turned back to Tony, his expression innocuous. "So, what else did you do today?"

Feeling the reassuring solidity of the oak breakfast table behind him, Tony shrugged--he kept forgetting that it hurt to do that--and tried to hide the wince. "Not much. Wrote a book, played a sonata, donated all your stuff to Volunteers of America."

Gibbs didn't even bother to roll his eyes. "Take your shirt off."

"Huh?"

Gibbs crossed to Tony in two long strides. "You hurt your hands, not your ears. You heard me, DiNozzo. Shirt. Off." When Tony didn't budge, Gibbs leaned closer. "If you can't do it yourself, I'll help you." The tone was kind, but the warning was clear: do it or I will. Tony sighed and turned around. "Oh, so now you're shy? Face me, DiNozzo."

Tony paused for a moment before slowly turning back to face his boss. Resentment emanated from him as he reluctantly started to remove his shirt. It was a painful struggle, and Gibbs had to resist the urge to 'rescue' his protege, knowing that that would only compound Tony's lack of self-esteem. Gibbs felt like a jerk, standing there watching while the younger man forced himself to endure pain and vulnerability on his order, but the irony of the situation was that in order to feel whole and strong, the ex-cop was going to have to learn to accept that it was safe to be so vulnerable, was going to have to be willing to show that trust not only in Gibbs but in his own ability to _be_ in whatever circumstances. Gibbs knew this a little too well, as it had never been his strong suit, and he would sooner drink drain cleaner than see Tony suffer as he himself had. He'd realized long ago that he was invested in this young man, but hadn't known how invested until he'd nearly lost him through his own stupidity; he'd promised Tony then that he would never let pride or presumptions damage their trust again, and he'd promised silently at the same time that he would be there when this boy needed a hand, that Tony would always be able to trust Gibbs to find him and show him the way back.

When Tony finally had his shirt off, having found ways to get around gripping and twisting, Gibbs ran a critical eye over every inch of the younger man's arms and torso, finding what he'd expected and having to bury his own wince--deep bruises had finally shown up around the shoulders and upper chest, compliments of the shock wave from the bomb blast, and a couple of the stitches on the boy's right arm looked inflamed. There wasn't any blood showing through the bandages, but Gibbs wasn't in the mood to take chances.

"You haven't taken anything." It wasn't a question, but the boy was drn well going to answer for it.

"I don't know, seems like I'm taking something right now." Tony's defensive grumbling was maybe a good sign, but not just at the moment, not when what he needed was real confidence, not reflexive petulance. Tony was going to have to learn to genuinely trust himself as well as Gibbs.

This was going to take awhile.

Ah, well. Semper fi.

"Okay, now you can turn around."

Tony gave Gibbs his snarkiest look. "Well, I don't exactly need to now."

Gibbs moved in. "Oh, I think you do." Before Tony could do more than start to lean back, Gibbs got a grip on the largest unbruised area of Tony's left upper arm and spun him around, sliding around to the younger man's left side as he levered the well-built torso down over the table, careful to avoid impacting the sore areas as much as possible.

"Gibbs--what the--" Tony sputtered, trying to get away, but physics was not his friend at the moment, and while Gibbs might not be stronger in a fair fight, he had the advantages of having eaten today while Tony hadn't and of meaning just enough to DiNozzo to make the younger man hesitate at the idea of truly fighting him. Gibbs hated the idea of taking advantage of that, especially when that was part of the relationship that he would need to foster for a while, but for all his cocky front, the junior agent had actually fallen in pretty quickly under Gibbs's authority on the job, and the senior agent could only hope that Tony would submit as swiftly this time; it wasn't going to be easy for either of them, but he was willing to fight for this young man--maybe the only one who ever had.

"Oh, I think you recognize the position." Gibbs gritted his teeth as he recalled Tony making references to childhood punishments that had always struck Gibbs as abusive, and he knew that he was going to have to make his point fast and firm and establish this as a new order and not a repeat of past pains. "Here's what you're gonna learn to recognize now." With his left hand pinning Tony's back, he brought his right hand down hard over the thin sweatpants. "Feel this? This is my hand connecting with your backside." He kept swatting, rhythmically but in no particular pattern, not surprised that Tony was shifting from foot to foot, trying in vain to stay out of the line of fire. "This is me telling you that I see you." Though he wasn't fighting as hard as he could, Tony had evidently decided to be the tough guy and run silent. Well, that wasn't gonna wash. Gibbs notched up the force, feeling the young man jump beneath his hand with each strike. "This is me telling you that I know who you are." He ramped up the speed of his swing now, determined to brand this concept into his charge with his words and tone while his hand stoked the fire; it be a long road for both of them, but this was just the ignition, and Gibbs had no intention of burning out the starter. "This is me telling you that I'm sticking, no matter where I am, no matter where you are, no matter what happens, I'm sticking, and there's nothing you can do about it." Tony had stopped fighting, had lowered his chest to the surface of the table, and was just listening through the sounds of distress that he tried so hard to stifle, and Gibbs could feel the engine turning over. "This is me, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, talking to you, Anthony Michael DiNozzo, without the badge. You don't think you exist without it? Ask your butt--I guarantee you it believes you're still here."

Barely winded, Gibbs paused for a few beats; he'd stopped swatting in the middle of his last sentence, and he flexed his right hand a few times while his left still rested on the younger man's back. After a moment, he shifted so that he was hip-to-hip with Tony, leaning down beside and over the junior agent, right arm over the trembling back so that one hand tented on the table on each side of the boy, in something that was halfway between a cage and an embrace. Inches from Tony's ear, Gibbs said, low and firm, "This is me telling you that you're not nothing, you're not a piece of tin, you're a cop, and a d good one. You're _my_ cop, Tony. I picked you; you think you got shoved on me, but you didn't--I studied everyone, every candidate they marked, and I chose _you, _I told them to call _you_ in with an offer. Your captain said I'd regret it, but I never have. _I_ want you. If I didn't, you wouldn't be here. I haven't been training a badge, DiNozzo; I've been training a lead, you've already proven that this summer, and whether you're a lead NCIS agent or a lead griddle scrubber, you're still more than most of the guys out there. The badge didn't make you, Tony; you made the badge. You made it every time you helped close a case, every time you caught a killer, or stood up in court against a gangster, or walked a beat in a Baltimore winter, or refused to take a kickback that would pay for a Maserati. You make it every time you go under against a terrorist, every time you stand for a sailor or a Marine. You make it every time you do something a lesser man wouldn't. You made it Monday night, off the clock, five feet from home, without a flack jacket or a warrant or anyone giving you orders." He leaned just a touch closer. "You're a Federal agent, a cop, because you choose to serve and protect. You're a _good_ agent, a _good _cop, because you can't be less. No piece of shiny metal can make that, and no piece of paper, no doctor's report, no fitness ruling, no angry words from an idiot father can unmake you."

Gibbs held position--and silence--for a moment to let that sink in, then he stood up and turned and crossed to the microwave, checking the temperature of the 'salad' before pulling out the two-pack of oversized cereal bowls that Maddy had sent him (in a box with a large bag of cereal, a can of cranberries, a huge plastic spoon, and a convenience-store-style personal fried apple pie) as a Thanksgiving joke that he was surprised she remembered. While he set to work dishing up dinner, he listened for an indication that Tony was recovering his composure; the younger man needed a couple of minutes to gather himself before carefully levering up to standing and then leaning down and reclaiming his sweatshirt. Gibbs made sure to give him plenty of time to redress, counting on Tony to figure it out and to ask for help if he needed it, before the older man brought over the bowls, tongs, and napkins. He heard quiet sniffles, which didn't embarrass the former Marine but did give him a twinge of guilt, but DiNozzo wordlessly went to the fridge and dug out a beer, carefully ferrying it to the table between two potholders that protected his bandages from the moisture, and set it down by one place before going back and getting another so that they'd both have something. The silence didn't surprise Gibbs--most of the team didn't realize it even after all this time, but Gibbs had seen Tony quiet before, though it usually meant that something major was brewing behind his eyes--nor did the younger man's ability to resume his routine on the heels of a major shock, as he'd done after the plague and after Kate's death. For the first time, it started to rankle on Gibbs that he didn't really know what was going on in Tony's head, but as long as DiNozzo was here, that can of worms could wait. The older man thought about switching Tony's beer for soda, but as DiNozzo had stubbornly refused to take any of his pain medication for the last three days, and as he didn't have a prayer of getting buzzed enough to forget what had just happened, Gibbs let it slide.

Tony wouldn't make eye contact, which wasn't exactly surprising, but rather than angry or pouty, he seemed... broody. When Gibbs told him to sit down and eat before it got cold, the young man looked a little dismayed but slowly complied, shifting subtly before determinedly capping the urge to squirm. Gibbs watched him with an increasingly practiced eye, satisfied--the boy was sore and would be for a few hours, but it was nothing that some sleep wouldn't take care of, and he'd probably be fine by the time Ducky arrived in the morning.

As for Tony's future with the job, well, they'd cross that bridge after it got built.

It took Gibbs a minute to get used to the salad tongs, though DiNozzo seemed to master them easily enough, and while the younger man picked at his dinner, appetite probably off commisserating with his dignity, Gibbs had no such reservations as he snagged a bite of beef.

Rib-eye.

Oh, yeah. Palmer was getting a raise.


	4. Celebrate Me Home

SF part 4 - Celebrate Me Home

_12-24-07 19:15PM_

They were just going to make it, if traffic held up. Tony checked the clock on Gibbs's dash, then went back to staring out the window at the holiday lights as they passed; he'd wanted to drive, thinking that they'd get there faster if he did, but Gibbs had vetoed that idea, with his annoying need to point out that Tony still couldn't curl his fingers enough to hold a soda can, let alone a steering wheel, and the senior agent was currently doing a decent imitation of Ziva's driving. Given that, the lights were sort of a multi-hued blur that would probably make a coke-snorting artist proud, but that was okay.

They'd gotten a call just after seven that the hostage situation had ended relatively well, that the hijackers were in custody, and that Ziva was back and currently being debriefed by the director; as until now none of the team members had known what Ziva's assignment had been, and none of them had heard anything about hostages or hijackers, Gibbs had started for his car before Jenny's assistant could finish her sentence, caring only that one of his people had been in trouble, and Tony had been on his heels.

The two men had elected to skip the annual Christmas Eve party this year, neither feeling like having to answer to Ducky or make things awkward for McGee; Tony had, with the help of his mysterious friend, ordered gifts for everyone and had had them delivered to the office so that he wouldn't have to deal with the packages himself (and he'd made it very clear to the vendors that there was to be no green wrapping paper involved.) But now they were headed in anyway, Ziva more important to them than Gibbs's headache or Tony's situational discomfort.

At least that was his most immediate source of discomfort tonight; the two men had compromised on pain medication, and he and Gibbs had had a couple more... stalls and restarts in the past ten days, but the last had been a couple of days ago, and the burning was gone, leaving... something in its wake, though what that something was, he wasn't ready to speculate. Oddly, he could still feel Gibbs's arm across his back during his lectures in what had, each time, seemed more reassuring than anything he'd ever gotten from his own father, but he didn't have the energy to speculate on that. Right now, he'd rather focus on the present than on the past he'd regretted or the future that he might not have.

-----

"Where are they?" Ziva glanced around the bullpen reflexively at McGee's question; he'd been so sure that Tony and Gibbs would be coming just as he had, and while she thought that they were all being a little ridiculous--after all, she was fine and she hadn't even dismembered anyone this time around--she, too, was a little concerned.

"Why weren't they already here? I thought Tony loved these stupid holiday parties." The two agents were standing in an island surrounded by a loose sea of coworkers who were all here out of a sense of obligation and all trying to pretend that they weren't gawking at the Israeli, who'd been gone for most of the month and had suddenly appeared a couple of hours ago, only to be rushed up to the director's office, and had only emerged minutes ago. She wasn't in a fantastic mood as it was, and this wasn't helping. She really didn't need her boss and her other partner showing up to gawk, too, though Tony not being here already kind of bugged her.

It bugged her a little more when she saw McGee's expression, that weird way he had of trying to figure out how to say something while trying to figure out how not to say it at the same time. On the best of days, it drove her nuts, but today... "For Paul's sake, McGee, just say it."

"Pete. The expression is, 'for Pete's sake.'" McGee sighed and dropped his head, putting his hands on his hips and chewing on his upper lip as he wondered how he'd been left to handle this. "Tony's... well, he's been... not at work lately. There was a situation a couple of weeks ago. He, uh, he's had some trouble--"

"Trouble? Not at work? What happened, McGee?"

"There was a girl--"

"Oh, of course there was." He tried to resume his story, but she held up a hand. "Stop, McGee, just stop. I've heard enough." He kept trying and she kept heading him off, really sure that she didn't need to hear about Tony and some girl. She would worry tomorrow about Tony and how much trouble he could've bought for himself with Little Miss Rebound or whomever, but for now, she just didn't have the patience.

"Ziva, would you just--" She could tell that he was getting really frustrated, much more than usual. "How is it that I always get stuck handling these things?"

"Because you're just so good at it." Everyone turned as Gibbs strode into the bullpen, making a beeline for his foreign operative. The air around him all but roiled with thunder clouds, and though his face was inscrutable, his eyes were storming. Everyone else scattered from his path and Ziva drew herself up, prepared to meet his wrath but confused about what she might've done to incur it, and she just had enough time to register that there was something besides anger there before he reached her. He looked her up and down before locking on her eyes. "You okay, Ziva?" Her eyes and her surprise grew at his low, almost soft tone, and something in her was oddly gratified by it. She just managed to remember to nod as his eyes narrowed. "Good. Did you leave any of the hijackers for me?"

Ziva blinked a few times. It took her a moment to realize what he was really asking. "Yeah. All of them, actually. I was only a hostage for about the last five minutes before my tac team entered and the whole thing ended; for most of it, I was the one doing the negotiating."

"And that's not a scary thought at all."

Ziva barely registered the relief in Gibbs's eyes at her clarification before every head in the room turned to see Tony striding out from behind the stairs--and then all but three heads quickly turned away. She traded his sarcasm for a sour look before noticing two things--the intensity of his eyes on her, with the same relief she'd seen in Gibbs, and that there was something wrong with his overall appearance. It took her a moment to realize that he seemed too dark below the neck--Tony was in a black mock-turtleneck, black slacks, black shoes, and black gloves... no, mittens. Not only was it odd to see someone wearing any kind of gloves in the bullpen, but mittens were just not Tony's thing. Then she noticed that he looked a little ragged, and when a couple of people called out half-hearted greetings to him, he nodded once in their general direction without waving or taking his eyes from her. She couldn't put her finger on why that bothered her; it certainly wasn't because of his attention--she'd never felt quite so claimed as she did tonight, and as disconcerting as that thought was for the ex-assassin who didn't do warm and fuzzy, she was pretty sure that the temperature in the room had just risen, and she wasn't going to complain.

"Ziva!" She barely had time to look away from Tony before Abby all but tackled her. Staggering back a couple of steps, flustered, Ziva resigned herself--she gingerly returned Abby's embrace, and she was about to reassure the scientist that she hadn't been in much danger when Abby pulled back and said brightly, "Kickin' diffusal! I haven't had time to read the transcripts yet, since I only found out, like, twenty minutes ago, but Flavel, your AV tech, is a buddy of mine, and he hooked me up with the audio from the last few minutes. He couldn't believe that you told the hijackers to blow it out their tailpipes while you were cuffing them; I just laughed, and he was so mad when I wouldn't tell him why."

"Yeah, you've been around us too long. You're gonna have to apply for mental distress pay." Tony still refused to look away from Ziva, his gaze holding onto her like an anchor.

"Tony!" Abby sounded almost as happy to see him as she had to see Ziva. "You're out!" She hugged him gently, pulling back after just a moment, and it struck Ziva that there had to be a reason behind that. Tony had looked just a little panicked for a second there, and now he was looking at the floor. "Oh--did I hurt you?"

Abby sounded so worried that his eyes flashed up. "No," he said, low but firm, "it's alright. You know me, I'm always fine."

"That has yet to be determined," Ducky said as he limped in from the back. "Jethro, I can't believe you let him out tonight. I know, I know," the older man waved dismissively before his old friend could defend himself, "DiNozzo is all but impossible to control. But really, Tony, you know better. Now, let me see those." Everyone who wasn't part of the team was staunchly pretending that they were anywhere else and that this wasn't happening; Ziva filed that away.

"Ducky, that's really not necessary, I'm fi--"

Ducky planted himself in front of Tony. "I'm sorry, did you think that was a request?" Tony looked down at the older, shorter, physically unimpressive man, sighed, dropped his head, and submitted, holding his mittened hands up for inspection. Ducky nodded approvingly before carefully removing the black coverings.

Ziva gasped, her experienced eyes widening. "Those are..." she whispered in shock.

"Shrapnel wounds and contact burns." McGee stood beside her, forcing himself to look at Tony's hands, something he hadn't done since seeing the photos from the OR.

"What...?"

"Pipe bomb," he murmured. "In his hands. He was protecting--"

"The girl, yes, I know." She heard McGee's sigh and knew that he understood that she wasn't going to listen to anything he had to say about _her_, at least not tonight. "Tell me you caught the bombers."

"Bomber. And yes. He's gonna be spending a very unhappy six years in Federal prison; his lawyer just about spit nails that she couldn't argue it out of Federal or at least get him tried as a minor."

"Minor?"

"Yeah. High school kid. Copycatted a serial pipe bomber; didn't bother to do his homework on where he was planting the thing, even delivered it himself. Flipped Tony off in the stairwell."

Her blood was starting to boil. "Here's your sign." Out of the corner of her eye, she caught McGee's startled look. "What? The radio kept picking up a country music station." Personally, Ziva was starting to wonder what kind of girl could be worth Tony almost losing his hands.

"I told you that they needed air to heal--I did not say that they needed to be exposed to air that is four degrees above zero!" Ducky sounded tired, more resigned than angry. "I know you care for our Ziva, as do we all, but really..." Ziva understood that Ducky wasn't discounting her but was simply mother-chickening Tony, and personally, she agreed with the older man. She couldn't take her eyes from Tony's hands, which were apparently all but non-functional.

"McGee, when?"

"Couple of weeks ago. Director Shepard wanted to get a message to you, but she said that we couldn't risk your cover."

Two weeks. Two weeks, and he had little to no use of his fingers. Ziva winced and tore her gaze away; she'd seen enough bomb victims to know that Tony was lucky to be alive, especially if the bomb had been designed by a hormonal amateur, but if he hadn't recovered some function by now, she could guess at the odds. She thought that maybe she understood now why Tony hadn't wanted to look away from her--up until a minute ago, she'd been the only normal thing left to him. Among all of the tinsel and bright lights trying to turn the bullpen into a place of cheer and hope, Ziva thought she might be sick.

"Mr. Nose?"

Ziva, McGee, and Ducky turned at the sound of the small, surprised voice. Ziva blinked, trying to make sense of why she was seeing a uniformed guard from the security checkpoint in the parking lot, a very uncomfortable-looking teenage boy standing on the other side of the foot of the stairs, one hand holding something gauzy and fur-trimmed, the other holding tightly to the hand of a tiny girl whose black hair contrasted sharply with her red nose, her blue coat, and her white dress. Her dark eyes were so wide that Ziva was afraid they might pop right out, and her gaze was fixed on what little she could see of Tony over Ducky's shoulder. Everything in the office had fallen still, all heads turned toward the children. For a moment, no one moved, no one made a sound.

"I'm sorry, sirs, they, well, they ran right past us and insisted on coming in. We called the director, and she said to bring them up." The uniform stood stiffly at attention, though one hand lay firmly on the teenager's shoulder.

"S-sorry," the boy said quietly, obviously wishing that he could disappear into the floor. He shrugged inside his brown coat. "We were on the way to my uncle's church for the Christmas thing, and I told her this is where you guys worked, and she made me stop here; I told her we're gonna be late, and that no one would be here on Christmas Eve, but she wouldn't listen." His eyes skipped over Tony before he focused shyly on Gibbs. "She just had to ask you something."

Out of the corner of her eye, Ziva saw Gibbs move to Tony's side, and she turned to see him subtly helping Tony don his mittens again. "It's okay, son, but I think what she really wants is to ask _him_." Gibbs patted Tony on the back, then rocked back on his heels as Tony gave him a grateful look and strode powerfully over to the kids. Whatever uncertainty had plagued Tony before was gone as he knelt in front of the little girl.

She gasped a little as her brother freed her hand so that she could rest her white mittens on Tony's black shoulders. "You're here."

He nodded. "Yep, I'm here. It's kind of my home away from home. Do you know what that means?"

She nodded. "Uh huh. But..."

He smiled gently and leaned in a little, not even flinching as he rested his black mittens on the sides of her shiny white dress. "What is it, Bit?"

Her chin started to tremble. "Do you hated me?"

Tony's shock was palpable. "No, of course not! I could never hate you, Marie--you're my little bit of heaven! Why would you think that?"

"'Cause you went away, I made you go away, and you never camed back--I thought I made you go away forever." Her words ended in a half-sob, and without even thinking about it, Tony pulled her close, one arm snugged around her waist, the other mitten covering most of her back.

After a moment, he pulled back, his hands returning to her sides as he locked his eyes on her. "Baby, no! I want you to listen to me now--are you listening?" She nodded, wide-eyed. "Good. I want you to remember this." He leaned a little closer. "You didn't make me go away. You didn't do any of this." He glanced up at her brother meaningfully. "Neither of you did," he said firmly. Tony turned his eyes back to Marie. "And I haven't gone away forever. You know my boss back there, Mr. Gibbs? You remember him. He told me how you kept your promise to me." She nodded, flicking her eyes up to see Gibbs wave at her.

"Listen to Mr. Nose, now." She responded to the gentle command in his voice, turning back to Tony.

"Thank you. I know Mr. Gibbs is your friend, and he's sort of mine, too; he's been helping me to not be lonely while I get better, and he makes sure that I don't do too much and hurt myself, so he's letting me stay at his house for awhile. I'll be back soon, though, and you'll see me again."

Marie shook her head sadly. "But I won't."

Brow furrowed in confusion, he looked up at her brother.

"We're leaving on Wednesday. Mom and Dad don't want her," he paused and then scornfully added, "_us_, near a place where stuff like this happens, so we're doing Christmas with my cousins tomorrow and then we're moving back to Ohiothe next day. They're probably right, too; I never got involved enough there for anyone to get mad at me, so I can't get her blown up again." The misery in his voice was hard to take.

"You're the one who's not listening, Ross--you're not responsible for what happened, or what could have happened; the boy who did this didn't let anyone get close enough to him to tell him to stop before he did something hurtful, but you do. You have your parents, and your sister, and now you have me."

"Us." Gibbs's tone was solid stone.

"Us. You're a good kid, Ross, and a good brother. You got past the scared and the mad and you helped us catch a bomber. You're making good choices; you're making a good young man. Don't stand here and tell us that you're gonna let some misplaced sense of guilt unmake you; trust me, that is not a road you want to go down." Tony waited until he saw the kid swallow hard and nod in acknowledgement. Ziva wondered why Gibbs was smiling.

Tony turned back to Marie, his eyes gentling. "And as for you, young lady," he leaned in and kissed her forehead, "I will miss my Marieness." He looked her in the eye again. "But you know what? I gave you something, a card with my name and phone number on it." She nodded as she remembered. "Do you still have it?"

Marie's eyes filled with tears; she looked down and shook her head slowly. "I losted it," she whispered brokenly.

Tony used the side of his mitten to raise her chin. "That's okay, you can have another one." He didn't even have to hold out a mitten--McGee had a card from Tony's desk in Ross's hand in seconds. "Ross will hold onto it for you, and then both of you can know where it is." He leaned close, looking up at her seriously through his lashes. "If you ever need me--either of you--you can call me, and I'll come. I don't care what's going on, if you call me, I'll come." He pulled back. "I'm sorry it's not something fun all wrapped up in nice paper, but they don't let me shop--I'm a little dangerous." He winked at Marie, watching the glimmer of a smile through her tears.

"You saved her life--you guys saved both of our lives. Who cares about paper?" Ross sounded close to tears himself; he'd come here tonight sure that no one understood how broken he was over what had happened, and he was going to leave more whole than he'd been before this had started.

"But... but I don't have a present for you. I sorry, Mr. Nose, I love you but I can't give you anything." The tiny girl sobbed, and Tony cuddled her, letting her nestle into his shoulder.

"Do you both promise to keep making good choices and to be the best you you can be?" He saw Ross's nod and felt Marie's. "Then you just did." He held the girl for another minute, letting her calm down, and then he glanced at Ross's other hand. "Well, I'll sure miss you, but I've gotta let you go now--looks like you have some glorifying to do. We can't have our angel showing up late for her announcement, now, can we?"

Marie obviously didn't want to leave his arms, but she shook her head, drew herself up straight, and took a deep breath. "That's my girl," Tony said, smiling proudly. He stood up, kissed his right mitten, and 'passed the kiss' to the tip of her nose. "Do me a favor, Ross--don't leave her alone again for a long, long time."

Ross looked sheepish again. "We won't. No one's real sure how that happened, but after all this, she'll be lucky if she even gets buried alone." He took his sister's hand again, her mitten gripped in his bare hand.

"Forget your gloves, son?" Gibbs came to stand next to Tony.

Ross shrugged. "I think they got packed somewhere."

"Well, here, take mine." Ducky hobbled over, holding out a pair of gloves that were very likely genuine English leather. When the wide-eyed teen shook his head, Ducky pressed. "No, don't shake your head at me; come on, dear boy, it's better than freezing out there! Look, I'm a doctor, and I do not want to see you losing your fingers to the cold! Go on, take them!" He didn't feel it necesarry to clarify that he was a medical examiner, at least not where he'd have to explain what that meant to a five-year-old.

"You heard the doctor, Ross--put them on." Oh, if only his own team obeyed as quickly as this kid responded to Gibbs's order. He was pretty sure that particular tall order wouldn't fit in Santa's bag. Or the sleigh. Possibly not the North Pole.

Seeing that Ducky was satisfied now, Gibbs crouched for a moment in front of Marie. "Thank you for stopping by to see us; I couldn't think of a better Christmas present." He stood and pinned Ross with a look. "Find yourself some good friends in Ohio. You'll need 'em, and they'll need you." The boy didn't understand, but he did nod, and that was good enough for Gibbs, who handed over his own card.

The senior agent glanced at Tony and then nodded to the uniform, and the young Marine saluted and then started to guide the children to the elevator. Marie was busy waving to Tony, who waved back with his mitten and blew her another kiss; just before she'd have disappeared behind the stairs, though, she stopped altogether, jerking her brother to a surprised halt. She worked her right hand free of her mitten and out of his grasp, then ran back to throw herself at Tony. He caught her, picked her up, and squeezed lightly, once, needing the hug as much as she did. "Gotta go, Bit. You take care of you."

"You take care of you, too, Mr. Nose! I love you!" She twisted and looked over his shoulder, nailing Gibbs with dark eyes as she raised her left mitten to block her mouth from Tony and said in a stage whisper, "Remember--lots of baths." Being a Marine, Gibbs kept a serious face as he nodded solemnly, but Ziva, who was more confused than ever, heard McGee snort behind his hand. Ross came to take his sister, settling her on his hip as he rolled his eyes and shot the adults an apologetic "What can you do?" look.

Everyone watched until the two children and the Marine disappeared with the dinging of the elevator. "That's the girl," Ziva said softly.

McGee nodded. "That's the girl."

She turned to face him. "Tell me."

McGee was quietly catching her up, Ducky and Abby were wondering where Palmer was, and Gibbs was murmuring something to Tony, who was gazing at his own black mittens, when they heard someone say, "DiNozzo!" Everyone turned to look up at the director, who was standing on the landing outside of her office suite, looking tired and somber. She looked at the stairs, and Tony started up, Gibbs a step behind and to the left. When the men reached her level, they stopped, a world of unvoiced questions hanging in the air.

Jenny sighed. She'd watched from her landing as the brash young agent had shown just how powerful a leader he could be. "I'm surprised to see you here tonight."

Tony held her gaze. "That makes it pretty much unanimous. There something I can do for you?"

Jenny glanced at Gibbs, caught the storm in his eyes, the promise that they would have much to discuss. 'I'm sure we will, Jethro,' she thought. "DiNozzo... Tony... I wasn't going to do this until after Christmas, but since you're here now, I don't see much point in putting it off. I've, uh, been in contact with your doctor..."

She was hesitating. Jenny Shepard didn't hesitate. Tony sucked in a breath but waited--he had nothing but time.

Seeing that he wasn't going to react, and knowing that Gibbs wouldn't wait long before erupting, the director plunged on. "I'd like to see you in my office, Tony. We have some things to... we need to talk."

There it was. She wouldn't look him in the eye, but she wanted to talk. Tony closed his eyes, just for a second, then opened them again and nodded once.

He was about to start forward when he felt a hand on his arm. "You need me?" Gibbs asked softly. Everyone from NCIS up to the SecNav knew that Jenny wouldn't keep Gibbs out if Tony said yes, even if only the two men understood why he'd asked, or why he'd bothered to ask.

"No. Thanks." He hooked his right thumb under the elastic of the left mitten and worked it off, then did the same to the right, eyes still fixed on Jenny. He offered his mittens to Gibbs, preparing to meet his fate whole and unfettered. Tony started to move, and a heartbeat later, he found himself stopped, turned, and pulled into a fierce hug. It was over almost before it began, but there was nothing awkward or obligatory about it, and neither man was likely to forget it. As Gibbs pulled away, he gently palmed the handgear. Tony gave him a calm, collected nod. "Save some party for me." He followed Jenny through the door.

Gibbs stood at the top of the stairs, holding the mittens that had guarded Tony's damaged hands against a cold world, and understood that Tony had just told him that he'd be okay.

Downstairs, dozens of agents and staffers, before unable to look at Tony and now strangely hard-pressed to pull away from him, silently wished him all the best for Christmas and the new year, and then they slowly turned back to a party that was suddenly more than it had been.


	5. O Come, All Ye Faithful epilogue

Semper Fi - O Come, All Ye Faithful

by firechild

Rated T

Disclaimer: I own the original characters (well, after a fashion, anyway) and about half a bottle of rolaids. I do not own the NCIS canon characters or the guests from another fandom, nor do I own an Auburn (and would not want to pay the insurance on one)...

A/N: This is the epilogue for Semper Fi; remember, the writer very rarely promises to lay everything out right from the start, nor does he/she promise to do precisely what everyone wants. And yes, there is a 'guest' fandom mentioned--see if you can spot it. ;)

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_12-24-24 19:14pm_

He hated this office.

He hated this job.

Even after all this time, he couldn't believe that he'd been relegated to this hole, chained to the most un-ergonomic ergonomic chair known to man, and expected to be a happy little desk jockey. He'd never been much of a salesman, and he'd counted on that to keep him in the lower ranks, where he belonged, so precisely how he'd wound up here for the 'interim,' or who had been stupid enough to stick the problem child here, he didn't know. What he did know was that he now spent his days buried in paper--requisition forms, budget proposals, expense reports, petty disputes, employee grievances, equipment inventories, transfer files, file transfers, memos from the stuffed shirts--he'd been working here for years now, but it was only since his reassignment to this glorified closet, supposedly a step up from his floor job, that he fully appreciated how tough his former boss had had to be to have kept her sanity. Granted, she'd actually wanted to be a pencil pusher, having worked her way up from the rank-in-file specifically to nail down this job and hold it for over a decade, but still, this upper-middle-management business was so dull that the only thing that actually saw any kind of action these days was his old Mighty Mouse stapler. And either he needed to get his eyes checked for boredom blindness, or he'd just initialled a retirement request from said stapler.

Thinking about his trusty little tool had him flexing his right hand. Despite his previous jobs, including working at a hospital in Hawaii and a small film lab in California (not to mention a brief but memorable stint as a school security guard in Arizona,) he was still a Northern boy, he still preferred the cold, but it made his hands ache. Reflexively doing the exercises he'd learned in therapy seventeen years ago, he eyed the six requests for transfers into his department, and shook his head with a wry snort; he'd have to do some research on those. While he was glad to see that his department was still considered a hotspot, with more quality candidates than open seats, he'd learned long ago that the number of words on a resume was not directly proportional to the level of performance the applicant could bring to the job. His people certainly weren't vaunted for their bad coffee and spectacular morning breath; they had reached--and kept--their 'crew of the line' status by consistently providing what he thought of as killer customer service, and they did it through personal dedication and some serious teamwork. His job was to continue to challenge them to be better individually and as a shift, not to implode their dynamic by adding the wrong representatives. Besides, he felt pretty good about the mix of people he had at the moment, even knowing that his latest addition was causing some ripples, and since it had only been two weeks and he wasn't going to regret bringing the man in, he would have to sit on his hands and trust his team to adjust to the current situation.

Ah, well, the transfer issues could wait until after Christmas. He filed the requests and locked the drawer, then glanced at his desk again to ensure that he hadn't left out anything that could get him sued. As he really was beginning to loathe the sight of white paper, his eyes slipped from the open folder full of requisition forms for earth-shatteringly critical items like paper clips and coffee filters, and his gaze brushed fondly over the small, motley collection of mismatched photo frames that he'd insisted on bringing with him (maybe the only good thing about him being stuck in here was that at least here there was room for his pictures--his desk on the floor was too small for more than an outdated computer, an ancient phone, and a rolodex that he only pretended to use--all of his personal items stayed in a drawer.)

He smiled unconsciously to himself as he saw the photo of Logan and Max with little Ranza and Liam, and then the portrait of himself pretending to pour red wine on Jenny's Italian-designer wedding gown while Ziva wrapped her hands around his neck from behind, and there was Ducky with the dark green Auburn he'd been given for Christmas in '09, and then Abby with her twins in matching tartan skirts with a Scottish castle behind them, and then a small candid, which Gibbs had pretended not to know about, of the old Marine getting his nose nibbled by the only woman who'd ever kept him for more than ten years--Reveille had been little more than a pup then, but it had taken Gibbs months to earn the abused dog's trust, and moments like the one captured in the photograph had been too precious to resist. He had a few other shots in various places around his apartment, but his pictures from Gibbs's last wedding hadn't come out, and in any case, this one was still his favorite, not that he'd ever been stupid enough to admit that to the older man. He did still feel the urge to breathe, after all.

And he saw, resting at the feet of his photos, a single, long-standard envelope. It wasn't stamped or postmarked or even addressed; the only marking on it was his name in small, black capital letters dashed off by a neat but impatient hand that had needed no address, had just known that this would find him. He'd received it by courier just a few hours ago, and knew that it contained no letter, no note of any kind--only a set of keys. Hitching one hip onto the corner of the desk, he brushed the tips of two fingers gingerly over the mound that the keys made in the paper. He should have known; he should have expected this. Maybe, in a way, he had. He needed no explanation, as the sender had trusted.

Trusted him.

As he had trusted, and had never regretted that trust. They had been faithful. to themselves and to each other, for so long, as they'd gained and lost so many pieces of themselves. They'd gone separate directions, they'd turned to different lives and different paths, but they'd always trusted each other to be there, to be ready to catch, to hold together, to hold up.

And he would honor that trust now, he would be faithful now and for as long as he drew breath.

He could do no less.

He fingered the mound again, silent, as another little piece of himself broke away. He knew better than to try to hold onto it; instead, he braced himself to release it in a moment of acceptance.

But the moment didn't come. What did come was music--someone had signalled the start of the obligatory shop Christmas party by programming the floor PA system to pipe in a techno version of "Happy Holiday."

There would be calls to make, people who deserved to know. He glanced at the phone on his desk, but his fingers were already easing into his holster for his cell, the private cell that he still carried purely because he felt that he was allowed his idiosyncracies. Time zones didn't matter--the very few people who did matter at the moment wouldn't care what time he called. Even so, he couldn't help flicking a glance at the calendar on the wall as the holiday music wafted relentlessly into the air around him. He really should reprimand his subordinates for pirating company equipment to misuse the emergency address system this way, but he figured that if they had to deal with their newest team member without any sympathy or overt intervention from him, then he could overlook the traditional misdemeanor. Again.

He might be a supervisor in this place, but a stuffed shirt, he was not.

He was, however, a little chagrined at his relief when his decision about whom to call first got put on the back burner by a knock on his office doors; he was a little surprised that someone had managed to get up the stairs and through the vacant office next to his without him hearing them. He was even more surprised when the person who stuck her head into the room at his summons turned out to be Janet--she habitually wore heavy pumps that made about as much of a racket as Two-Step Night at the cowboy bar near his apartment. He'd told her several times to change her footwear--how she managed with as much as she was on her feet in this job, he would never know--but as she wasn't violating the department dress code, he would just have to wait until she figured out for herself that heels were a bad idea around here. He shook his head; he'd been so caught up in his thoughts that he'd tuned out Kozlowski's approach, and he was going to have to be more careful about that. He'd promised himself a long time ago that no one who hadn't worked with him before that explosive Christmas would ever be allowed to sneak up on him. He'd done a lot of different things since then, but this being a desk jockey was killing his edge.

"What is it, Janet?"

The young woman looked a little concerned, though whether it was his head-shaking or the fact that he hadn't changed into what she felt were appropriate party clothes (judging from the fact that she looked like Vera Ellen getting ready to wow Danny Kaye, he wasn't bothered too much about his lack of tails,) he didn't know. He hoped she wasn't actually planning on doing a number--he could just see having to report that young Miss Kozlowski had hurt herself, not doing her job, but at a holiday party. The paperwork alone would take longer than the detective's exam he'd taken... more years ago than he wanted to remember.

He really hated paperwork. He'd rather eat those paperclips he had to requisition. He'd rather eat lead... not that anyone was likely to be shooting at him here.

"Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I thought you'd want to know that the hospital called--Midshipman Vance has regained consciousness, and he's insisting on speaking with you, though he refuses to say why."

He stood up, every nerve ending in his body going on alert. "For me specifically, or for the AIC?"

She looked confused by the question. "For you, sir--apparently, he knows your name."

He moved swiftly, rounding the desk and bending to retrieve his badge and gun from their drawer and straightening in one fluid move; as he donned the items, he tried to stem the rush of excitement--he had faith in Travers, wouldn't have left him in charge of the team if he didn't, and he knew that the younger man needed the experience, but it felt good to be moving again, to be quite literally back under the gun. It felt good just to be back.

"Sir, surely you're not going to go yourself--according to regulations, you can't..." She trailed off, blinking at his speed as he brushed past her and crossed the outer office in long strides, his trenchcoat over his arm; he bit back the urge to laugh, and had to remind himself that she'd never seen him in action, that she'd come on board just two months ago, three months after he'd been kicked upstairs 'temporarily,' and as she'd meshed reasonably with Travers and Ahmed, he'd forced himself to keep sitting on his hands and let his pups manage their cases and their conflicts with little direct involvement from him. He'd tracked every move, every call, every decision they'd made, he'd never actually left them entirely adrift--MTAC was going to be good for something if he still had to sign the monthly bills for a theater full of equipment designed for a job that was now done in some hurricane bunker somewhere in Florida--but still...

He placated himself with a dry chuckle as she scrambled down the stairs in his wake. "Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about that part of the reg manual, Kozlowski--bosses around here have a way of reinterpreting the heck out of it." He could hear her sputtering, reminding him more than a little of Agent Lee, but to her credit, she chose to keep any further comments to herself. That was why he'd chosen her for this post--she wasn't afraid to learn, and she was about to learn a whole lot about Interim Director Anthony DiNozzo... make that Supervisory Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo.

"Gear up, kids; the figgy pudding's gonna have to wait. We've got a sailor to interview and a case to solve." He lost no time rounding his desk and grabbing the minicorder that he kept in the side drawer with all of Gibbs's medals (and four civilian commendations of his own.) He didn't have to look up to get the stunned and disappointed looks on two of his pups' faces and the relieved expressions of the third pup and the other partiers. "Music too loud for your refined Federal ears? I said, let's go." By the time he raised his head, he was pleased to see all three scrambling for their kits. "Ahmed, tell Ingram to meet us at Mercy Hospital--she's earned some field time."

If Ahmed, who was obviously discomfitted to be surrounded by Christmas revelers (Travers had, no doubt, conned him into attending the party,) had any reservations about DiNozzo whisking them away now, Tony would eat his shoe. "Yes, sir!" The young agent had the fastest dialing fingers Tony'd ever seen, and he was obviously happy to be tagging his eager young colleague, who'd recently helped to rescue him from an unbalanced former Marine with a vendetta against NCIS.

"Sir, shouldn't I, um, change?" Kozlowski's cheeks were flaming as she indicated her gown.

He didn't even spare her a glance, having already noted that both boys were in Dockers and sweaters. "Have you got a change here?"

"No, sir."

"Then throw a coat over it--it's cold out there." He turned and approached her, dropping his voice. "Always keep at least two changes here. And realistic shoes. You never know what you'll end up on, or what might end up on you." He saw her swallow and nod once, stowing her embarrassment and accepting the lesson.

He turned again to pull on his suit coat and barely heard her, "_On_ me, sir?"

Tony smirked to himself, remembering, as he tugged on his trenchcoat. "Crime is rarely clean, Janet; it's usually messy, and sometimes it just outright stinks." He reached up to adjust his collar.

"Yep, what'd I tell ya--lots of baths."

Tony froze. It wasn't the voice... Collar forgotten in his hands, he turned, eyes wide.

She stood about as high as his adam's apple, her long liquid-black hair kissed with caramel here and there and echoing her deep brown eyes with their amber flecks and tinge of violet around the irises. The color in her eyes was answered by the black of her worn leather jacket open over the dark purple of her semi-formal gown, which hugged curves that should have sent him blithering. Her warm toffee skin glowed, and her (natural) nails looked elegant as she rested her hands on her hips and let her black purse dangle from one wrist. Even her purple boots screamed, "Wo-man!" But there was just something...

"And whose Christmas angel are you?"

She chuckled. "I knew it--same old Mr. Nose!"

His heart sprang into his throat. "Marie?"

She smiled, that same sweet smile that would light up deep space, and he wasn't aware of letting go of his collar, wasn't aware of moving, but suddenly, he was holding out his hands to her. She glanced down at them, and just as it occured to him that she hadn't seen them since that night and he shouldn't force her to see the scars, she met his eyes again, hers suspiciously misty but steady, and slipped her hands into his.

He laughed a little through the moisture in his own eyes. "Your hands are freezing! What is it with your family and not wearing gloves?"

She gave a self-conscious shrug and deliberately snuggled her hands more securely into his, for the warmth, for the connection, for something in her eyes that he couldn't name. "I don't know--we just don't think about stuff like that. Oh, that reminds me..." She released him to delve into her purse. "Ross wanted to deliver this in person, but he's been out of the country for the last several years, so even though he's back now, he asked me to do it because he doesn't want to take a chance of missing out again." She pulled out a slender clear plastic box that contained a pair of leather gloves.

His breath caught in his throat and wrapped around his heart. He knew those gloves.

"I knew you'd know what to do with them." He looked back up at her, and her eyes told him that, whether by his reaction or by some other way, she knew.

He gently took the box from her. "I'll make sure that they get to the right place. How is Ross, by the way? And I thought I told him not to leave you alone."

She looked just a little impish. "Oh, don't worry, I won't be alone for long. He's meeting me at the Christmas service at our old church tonight." She leaned in conspiratorially. "He doesn't know that I came early. He told me that I should just wait till after New Year's and run it by after class, but I just had to see if you'd be here. I couldn't be this close and not try to see you, especially not on Christmas Eve." She winked at him; he knew that his team, and most of the rest of the teams, were watching them and wondering, but right now, he really didn't care.

"Run it by? After class? Marie, are you back?"

She shook her head. "Not like that--see, Ross is meeting me at church and he'll be escorting me to my cousin's house for Christmas, and then next week he's going to escort me to Quantico." Seeing his confusion, she elaborated. "I graduated early from college, and I've been accepted to an experimental training class. I'm going in to the FBI."

Pride warred with apprehension. "Oh, Marie, I'm proud that you got through college, but this isn't the kind of life I wanted for you."

She smiled fondly. "I know. But I can handle it. I really am a big girl now, and this is the right thing to do. Ross is only coming because it's tradition, he always used to take me to everything, and because we haven't seen much of each other since he started getting posted overseas." Tony raised an eyebrow at that, and Marie's smile turned proud. "He's a United States Marine. He enlisted after he got his associate's degree."

"That's... that's great, sweetheart. What's his specialization?"

She gave him a knowing look. "Criminology. Evidently, you and our Mr. Gibbs made quite an impression on both of us."

"Yeah... Gibbs has always been pretty good at, heh, making an impression."

"Speaking of..." She rose up on her toes and scanned the office. "I don't suppose he's around; I'd love to say hi."

"He's..." Tony missed a beat, "retired. But he'll love that you came by, and he'd growl at you about the gloves, too."

Her smile was distinctly melancholy now; she hadn't missed his hesitation. "Well, then, I guess I'll just have to trust you to make sure that his gift gets to the right place, too. And don't worry, I didn't forget you. I could never forget you."

He had the impression that she was using another rummage through her bag to buy time to collect herself, and that was fine with him. "You didn't need to get us anything, baby--seeing you is definitely still enough."

"Well, that's sweet, but..." She produced some cards and a small, thickly wrapped parcel. "That's for him," her voice caught as she handed Tony the parcel, "and these are for you." He examined the package curiously, feeling its heft, and shot her a quirked eyebrow. "A peephole. Sort of an inside joke." He gave a half-smile and nodded, understanding the symbolism, then turned his attention to the small cards in his other hand. "My card--at least, for now. I don't know if they give you cards after you earn your badge or what, but I do know that I owe you one. Two, actually."

He nodded as he read the card she'd indicated, then looked at the other one. "An invitation...?"

"It's my projected graduation date. I know that if I make it through training, I'll have earned my shield through my own dedication, but no matter how much I might respect my instructors, that badge won't really feel like mine until you pin it on me." She grew suddenly unsure. "That is, if you... I mean, you don't have to... I--"

She trailed off when he rested a finger over her lips. He met her eyes and knew that he'd never forget this night. "I would be beyond honored. You can count on me."

A tear finally managed to escape her expressive eye and made a break for her chin, followed by another on the other side; he brushed them away in turn with a gentle trigger finger, and she smiled again. "You NCIS agents--always so faithful. You just keep saving me. This makes four times, you know."

He was totally baffled. "Four times? Baby, I haven't..."

This time it was her finger stilling his lips. "Yes, you have. You see, you saved me that night, and then, on Christmas Eve, you helped heal something in my brother, something that he knows would have killed him; and if anything had happened to him, if he'd destroyed himself, especially because of me, I would have died with him. And now, here you are, saving me again, saving me from never feeling like a real agent. So, you see, you're just always saving me, so now it's time for me to get out there and make it worth all your work."

There was mischievous humor in her eyes and her tone, but he wasn't laughing. "It was always worth it, Marie. And you said four; that was three." Anyone could hear the challenge, and the command, in his low tone--it wasn't about how many times he'd supposedly saved her, it was about how she'd come to need saving and why she'd tried to gloss it over.

She had the good grace to look chagrined, knowing she'd been caught, but she'd obviously hoped not to have to fess up. She looked at him, searching for an out, and met solid stone; she shivered a little, grateful that at least she wasn't about to have to admit to having done something stupid--she was sure that that wouldn't have been at all comfortable.

"Marie." The low rumble carried a warning like distant thunder, and though she'd read of such things in novels, for the first time she thought that she could actually see a storm brewing in his eyes. She shivered again, and sighed.

"My freshman year of college, I was living in the dorm, and one day my roommate was out at a club meeting and I was holed up with her computer and my notes. There was a knock at the door, and I thought that if I ignored it, the person would think we were both out and would go away. Well, he didn't, and after a minute, he started talking, asking me to open the door and let him use the phone; I asked who it was, and he said he was in my math class and had really come because he wanted to ask me out. He sounded so nice, but there were so many people in my math class, and I thought I knew who he was and that he'd seemed really nice, but I just wasn't sure, so I didn't open the door. I told him that I was sick and that I wasn't going to let him catch what I had. He sounded worried and said that he was pre-med and that he'd take care of me, he'd been nursing his sister for years; he sounded so sincere, but I just couldn't relax. He tried the knob, but we had double locks on our doors, and I always used both of them, and after one try, he gave up. He told me he'd be back to check on me. I just couldn't shake this weird feeling, so I called a buddy of mine who worked campus security between classes, and he said he'd keep an eye open. The guy didn't come back, and I skipped the next couple of days and called to tell my roommate to stay with friends. Two days after he came to my door, he was caught digging behind an old storage shed near the field house. My buddy, who'd kept an ear to the ground after my call, connected him to me and to a couple of reports of girls being followed." She sucked in a breath. "Turns out, he was a serial rapist; one of his marks off-campus had gone sour and he'd killed her and stuffed her in that shed to hide her, and he was caught digging a grave for her. He was accelerating, he'd gone a week without a hit and was having a hard time restraining himself to keep from arousing suspicion. He was pre-med, but he'd been experimenting with easy targets on campus. I don't know why he gave up on me so easily, but I do know what usually happens when a serial escalates to murder. I know what almost happened to me." She hugged herself just a little with the memory. "I wanted to be a nice girl, I maybe even wanted to go on a date. I didn't open that door because of you, because I could hear you in my head, making me promise. That's four."

His heart ached and his blood boiled, but he settled for gathering her in his arms. He held her tightly, protectively, and she let him, finding her comfortable little nook in his shoulder as if it had been seventeen hours rather than seventeen years since she'd been in his embrace. "Oh, Bit," he moaned into her hair. Then he found her ear and said, low and slow and clear, "Now you listen to me, young lady. I didn't save you that day; you saved yourself. You listened to your instinct; you're alive because of your own choices. You were being the best you you could be, and that's pretty darn impressive. Don't you ever stop listening to that instinct, you hear me?" She nodded, and he shook his head. "Nope, not gonna cut it. You know how this works--I need to hear you say it, I need to hear you promise."

She pulled back a little to look up at him. "I will always listen to my gut; I promise, Mr. Nose." She drew herself a little straighter. "Agent DiNozzo."

He shook his head. "That's Special Agent Mr. Nose to you, young lady." He grinned proudly and leaned in a little. "Or how about just Tony?"

"Oh, I'm sure my supervisory agents would just love that." She rolled her eyes wryly, and they laughed. She backed up a step, and they joined hands again, the cards and the gift for their mutual friend warming between them. "It was good to see you. I'm glad I took the chance and came by." She glanced up at the clock on the wall and winced a little. "Well, it never fails; I'm gonna be late for church again. I won't be very far away now--maybe you'd let me take you to lunch sometime, catch up? Of course, we might have to wait till I'm actually getting paid..."

"Nope. Not gonna happen." He watched her face fall, and then he grinned. "But I might take you to lunch one day, treat you to something that doesn't include microwave noodles and little foil packets."

She beamed at him and squeezed his hands before reluctantly pulling away. "Sounds good to me. Once again, I've got to bounce--seems I'm always running out on you, doesn't it? Merry Christmas!"

He waved. "Merry Christmas, Bit--take care of you!" He watched her go and knew that she'd be okay, especially when she discovered that he'd slipped his own gloves into her coat pocket when he'd hugged her.

The mood around him was strangely subdued, no one else in the room having a clue what had just happened, as he turned back to his team. "Sorry for the delay, kids; let's go. We've still got a case to solve. Let's try to give someone a better Christmas than they expect." He carefully laid the gifts in the drawer with the medals, then plucked the gloves out again, changing his mind. "Go on over to the hospital, grab Ingram, and wait for me at the ICU. Dr. Palmer should be finishing the Harriman autopsy right about now; I think I'll drop down there and see what he's got." He didn't miss the grimaces his pups exchanged at the mention of the new ME, or the look of surprise on Travers's face.

"Autopsy? He's been working all this evening?"

Somebody snorted and muttered something about "probably having a nice little seance with the Seaman--wonder if he really expects any of them to talk back."

Tony slammed his desk drawer. Let them think that he was ticked off; he wasn't far from it. "That's right. He's been working. That's what Dr. Palmer does--he works so that you all can snicker behind your hands like eight-year-olds. He does what he does, and he's the best at what he does, and if this is a problem and I have to get rid of someone, he's last on my list." He eyed them, inwardly satisfied at their startled and chagrined looks. "And just for the record, yes, they do talk back to him--funny thing, how the dead have more important things to say than most of you on a given day." He let himself savor their winces for just a second before turning on his heel with the gloves in hand. "What are you waiting for? Get to work." He pointed himself toward the internal lift and didn't turn around to make sure that his three pups were heading for the public elevator; they were good kids, if in desperate need of a good Gibbs-smack now and then.

He'd have to wait until after Christmas to make those calls--no sense in doing it now--but there was one old friend who was about to get a bittersweet surprise from another old friend. The gloves were a small but real weight in his pocket, a reminder of the past and of how things tended to come full-circle. Tony couldn't do anything about those who weren't here, about the pieces of their lives that had gone on before, but one piece had come home, and Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo intended to honor that.

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End file.
